Infants and other incontinent individuals wear a disposable article such as a disposable diaper to receive and contain urine and other body exudates. Absorbent articles function to contain the discharged materials and to isolate these materials from the body of the wearer and from the wearer's garments and bed clothing. It is generally known in the art that disposable absorbent articles have many different basic designs. Examples of such disposable articles include disposable diapers (for baby and adult) including pull-on diapers and training pants, disposable absorbent pads including sanitary napkins, pantiliners and incontinent pads, disposable underwears, and disposable panties for menstrual use.
The exterior of these disposable absorbent articles is covered with a flexible, liquid impervious member to prevent a leakage of absorbed liquids from the disposable absorbent articles. Such a liquid impervious member is generally referred to as a backsheet, and is often constructed from a liquid impervious material such as a polyethylene film, and other outer cover material such as a nonwoven material (if desired). The backsheet constitutes the garment contacting surface of the absorbent articles.
It is also known that the garment contacting surface of the absorbent articles often has a printed graphic(s) to get users' or consumers' positive attention not only in use but also in the market. Such a graphic(s) is typically printed on either a landing zone material or a backsheet material. (The landing zone material is the anchor zone member for the tape fastening system in a tape type diaper.) Printing these graphics on the garment contacting surface of disposable absorbent articles has been becoming popular among consumers due to their entertainment functions.
Those graphics are typically printed by using conventional printing techniques such as the gravure and flexography technologies which employ a printing plate to print the graphic on a sheet material (e.g., a backsheet material, a landing zone material, and a fastening tape material). The printing plate has ink images for graphics to be printed. The printing plate is typically mounted on a printing cylinder in a printing process. In the printing process, when the cylinder rotates, the printing plate contacts the sheet material to transfer the ink images to the sheet material thereby printing the graphics thereon.
The number of the ink images which can be prepared in the printing plate depends on the sizes of the ink images (or the graphics to be printed), the printing plate and the cylinder. In general, since the size of the landing zone member is not large, the size of the ink images prepared in the printing plate tends to be small. On the other hand, since the size of the backsheet is relatively large (i.e., clearly larger than the landing zone member), the size of the repeated ink images tends to be large. This means that the total area of the printing plate is occupied by a small number of ink images. As a result, the number of the graphics to be printed is limited in particular for a relatively large component material of disposable absorbent articles such as a backsheet material.
Because of the above reasons, the variety of the graphics printed on conventional disposable absorbent articles is limited in one package. For example, the maximum number in the variety of the graphics printed on conventional disposable absorbent articles which are packed in one package is 10.
Thus, it is understood that this limitation results in preventing users or consumers from enjoying more variety of graphics in the disposable absorbent articles packed or contained in one package. In addition, this limitation also limits the function of the graphics within a limited area, i.e., a mere entertainment for enjoying the variety within the limited number. Further, this limitation has become a restriction to illustrate a complete theme which is believed to help children's education or development.
Hence, there is a need for an absorbent product that can provide an unlimited number of graphics printed on absorbent articles. There is also a need for a printing method for a component material of absorbent articles that can provide an unlimited number of graphics printed on the component material in one package. There is further a need for a packing method of absorbent articles having an unlimited number of graphics printed thereon in one package.